Karamu House

Zelma Watson George

Located at the corner of Quincy and East 89th Street, Karamu House is the "oldest African American theater company in America." Founded in 1915 by Russell and Rowena Jelliffe, that also means Karamu shares with the Play House the distinction of being the longest continually running theater company in Cleveland.

The theater club at Karamu was originally called the Dumas Drama Club, and later the Gilpin Players after actor Charles Gilpin. In 1941 they adopted the name Karamu, which is Swahili for either "a place of feasting and enjoyment in the center of the community" or the word "pencil" depending on whom you ask.

By the 1950s, Karamu's reputation as Cleveland's "Black" theater was firmly established, and had been for decades, premiering originally works by Zora Neal Hurston and once employing Langston Hughes as Playwright-In-Residence — one of only two to hold that title. However, from the original husband and wife team of the Jelliffes through the 1950s, the artistic and management directorships were held by whites.

"According to the record, Cleveland is one of the most progressive theatre cities in America."
- Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times

Interracial productions were the order of the day at that time — in recent days we learned that character actor Roberts Blossom got his professional start at Karamu, and Tedd Burr used to tell me he was half of a couple that engaged in the first interracial kiss on a Cleveland stage though for the life of me I can't remember what show he was talking about.

DID YOU KNOW ..?

Zelma Watson George (December 8, 1903 - July 3, 1994) sang the lead role in the opera The Medium for sixty-seven nights beginning in 1949 before the show transferred to Broadway? She returned to Cleveland, performing in The Consul at the Cleveland Play House and turn as Mrs. Peachum in a production of The Three-Penny Opera at Karamu. Later, of course, she was an advisor to the Eisenhower administration, as part of the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Armed Forces from 1954 until 1957, and that was just the beginning of an illustrious philanthropic career.

For the record, Karamu House gave me my first professional theater job. I was a member of their youth outreach, Drama/Theatre for Youth Project (D/TY) from 1991-92, traveling Greater Cleveland in a van with four other young actors, performing world folk tales to elementary and middle school students. I also got to play Howard Wagner in Death of a Salesman on the boards of the Jelliffe Theatre. I never got to meet ether of the Jelliffes in person — Russell died in 1980, but I did attend Rowena's funeral, she died in April, 1992 just a month after her 100th birthday.

Stealing Christmas, 1991

8/1/11 UPDATE: In 1997 the Zelma W. George Recreation Center opened in Luke Easter Park, which is also the site of the annual Unity Day Festival, an annual family-friendly event of fun and music in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, now in its seventh year. On the very evening I published this entry (July 31) George Clinton was headlining the event, when someone with a handgun opened fire, wounding three and killing one.

The shooter remains at large.

Sources:
African American Registry
Wikipedia
Showtime In Cleveland (John Vacha)
The Handbook of Texas Online/Texas State Historical Association

Vacation & Recreation Without Humiliation

My extended family has visited the same sleepy vacation spot for over 100 years, Flood's Cove in Friendship, Maine. Sometimes I imagine what it must have been like, prior to the Interstate, when my mother and her parents would pile into the car in the 1940s to drive all the way from Lakewood to the Atlantic coast. How many days did that take?

When I was a kid, traveling the same route in my folks enormous, brown Chevy station wagon, I looked forward to having a Yes & Know book, a copy of Dynamite, and hope we would stop at either HoJo's or My Uncle Bill's because both had a pool. HoJos, however, meant fried clams.

My children are "deprived" compared to many of their contemporaries. There are no DVD players mounted onto the backs of our seats for them to watch. The girl does not have her own mp3 player ... yet. Last month on our drive to North Carolina, I read an entire book to them - the first Harry Potter book. For the trip to Maine, we are reading the second. We do, however, borrow audio and video "Playaways" from the library so there is video, but it's limited.

What would a driving vacation have been like in 1954? Imagine no seat belts. A child, if they are lucky enough to be an only child or traveling without siblings, would get to stretch out in the back with a pillow and nap, and hopefully not be thrown out the windshield.

Hotels did not have indoor pools, you'd be lucky to get an outdoor pool, a playground would be a bonus. Also, a hotel with an attached restaurant was also scarce. People usually packed their own food, anyway, in a cooler - a big, steel cooler. At least there was room for it, the cars were comically enormous. Keep in mind, no one spent hand over fist the way they do today. They saved money in the bank, and spent what they needed to. It's weird. So going to any restaurant was considered a luxury, even on a road trip.

Of course, if you were black, being allowed to stay in a hotel could also be a luxury. Or downright impossible. Picture this: prior to the advent of credit cards, you couldn't place a reservation for a hotel. Dad just drove until he found a place with a big neon sign reading VACANCY, and then paid cash.

And if you weren't white, perhaps the manager in St. Petersburg would inform you that the going rate is $50,000 a night. Ha ha ha. True story. Many traveling families of color spent the night in their car, after spending hours trying to find a place that would allow them to stay.

Sources:
Retro Wife
Brigham Young University

Sexual Behavior in the Human Female

Dr. Alfred Kinsey's 1948 blockbuster Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was followed on September 14, 1953 by (duh) Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. It cost $8. Everyone claims they read it for the articles.

More than 5,500 women were interviewed, and they spoke liberally about sex, with partners and without, how many, where and at what time, if keeping your feet on the floor counts, and there was even the rumor of female orgasm.

We can now say with absolute certainty that these things are true:

7% of single women aged 20–35 and 4% of previously married females aged 20–35 are totally bi.

2 - 6% of females, aged 20–35, are pretty gay.

1 to 3% of unmarried females aged 20–35 are complete lesbians.

Married women do it 2.8 times a week in the late teens, 2.2 times a week by age 30, and once a week by age 50. Women over 50 were apparently not asked.

26% of all married women reported having had at least one extra-marital affair before the age of 40. Women over 40 were apparently not asked.

12% of all women like the rough stuff.

Or so it was true in the 1950s.

The fact is, this information came at a point in American history we generally think of repressed and conservative and that we are so much more open-minded about sexuality, and homosexuality in particular, than sixty years ago.

The logic went something like this: Because Communism is the opposite of America, and homosexuality is the opposite of America (because God hates ... well, you've been told who God hates) therefore homosexuality is Communism.

Like that joke about God being Ray Charles. But seriously.

So let's say there is someone in the State Department who has a secret homosexual life. Either a) they are a Communist spy or b) even if they aren't they are susceptible to blackmail in a way a straight person isn't so they may as well be a Communist spy, they will betray us eventually.

In other words, the bigotry inherent in an intolerant society can be used against you before the fact because straight-hate makes you untrustworthy.

Shorter answer; Being gay doesn't make a gay person a bad person. Being straight makes a gay person a bad person.


Sources:
Wikipedia
Indiana University

Agatha Christie

After God, Agatha Christie (15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) is the best-selling writer of books of all-time. Before God, He pales from the comparison.

1920 she debuted as an author with The Mysterious Affair at Styles, a book she had been working on for roughly four years. It was a very well-received first novel ("She betrays the cunning of an old hand." - The New York Times Book Review) and introduced the world to a legendary fictional creation, the fastidious and bizarre Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, a figure Christie herself would come to detest though she kept creating crimes for him to solve because he was so darned popular.

The most recent Poirot adventure in 1954 was Funerals Are Fatal (released in the UK as After the Funeral) which is notable as homosexuality is discussed as a possible motive for the crime, in this case between two women. It is described by one of the police inspectors as a "feverish female friendship" which is how I insist all lesbian relationships must be described from now on.

Christie was also a very successful playwright, though she never presented the character of Poirot on stage, sometimes even adapting Poirot novels for the stage, but eliminating him as a character. By 1954, her play The Mousetrap began its second year playing the West End where it remains to this day, the longest continually-running play in history with over a whopping 24,000 performances to date.

The Mousetrap at Great Lakes Theater
March 10 - 25, 2012

Yes, that's me.

Arthur Loesser

Arthur Loesser (Aug. 26, 1894 - Jan. 4, 1969) was born in New York City and began playing piano at age six. A graduate of Columbia and the Institute of Musical Art (later known as Julliard) he toured the world as a concert pianist beginning in 1913.

During World War II he was an officer and a Japanese interpreter, and later became the first American to appear in Japan after the war, with the Nippon Symphony.

Loesser had joined the faculty of the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1926, becoming head of the piano department in 1953. He was program editor and annotator for the Cleveland Orchestra (1937 - 1942), and a music critic for the Cleveland Press (1938 - 1956).

He also wrote popular books on music, Humor in American Song (1943) and Men, Women, and Pianos: A Social History (1954).

DID YOU KNOW ..? Loesser tells us the reason the piano became the most acceptable instrument for genteel ladies in the Western World is because of all of the things women aren't required to do to play one. They need not purse their lips, nor wrap them around anything, spread their legs or crane their necks. They just sit up straight and tap their fingers. But then, Loesser never saw Tori Amos.

In 1968, Loesser was awarded a special citation from the Cleveland Arts Prize for Distinguished Service to the Arts.

Arthur was the elder half-brother to Broadway composer Frank Loesser. It was Arthur who referred to himself as "the evil of two Loessers," a line Frank would steal and use in reference to his first wife.

Sources:
Encyclopedia of Cleveland History
Wikipedia
Cleveland Arts Prize

"Let's Go Bowling!"

"Every size, age, kind, breed and class from all walks of life."
Except ... well, you know ...
Last year my wife took the girl to what they call Girl Camp, a weekend of feminist mysticism and indoctrination. Seriously, though I think they sit around a campfire and sing and cry and talk about boys. So the boy and I declared our home Boy Camp which meant we slept in, farted a lot and went BOWLING.

This weekend ... BOY CAMP YEAR 2: This time, it's Star Wars.

Bowling Proprietors Association of America presents:
Let's Go Bowling


Growing up in Bay Village, my parents would take me with them on League Night, when I was too old for them to seem to justify paying for a babysitter, but too young to leave at home on my own, like when I was eight or nine years-old. Besides, I knew there would be pizza at Dominic's afterwards.

Bay Lanes in those days was full of smoke, smelled of beer, and the "kids' room" was a plexiglass cage with broken toys and a black and white TV with very poor reception. Those under 18 were not allowed in the "lounge" which was a slightly more respectable plexiglass cage in the swinging 1970s style. I would often slip in quickly to snab one of the cardboard coasters or bev naps with dirty cartoons on them.

DID YOU KNOW ..?

Nixon did not build the first bowling alley in the White House. He did have a new alley constructed (paid for by donors, not taxpayers) under the North Portico in 1969. However, bowling lanes were originally installed in the West Wing in 1947 as a birthday present for President Truman ... who did not like bowling. The staff, however, formed a league. Makes you wonder which bowl-happy member of the staff thought that might be a good present.

These lanes were torn out in 1955 to create a mimeograph room.

Sources:
The White House Museum
Secret Bay Village

Styles: First Read

You can’t have a good reading without good readers. Last night I had a good reading.

The goal is adapting a ninety year-old mystery novel into a one-hour performance with one set and five actors. As two men must be onstage, interacting with all of the other characters a lot, that means two men playing one character each, and one man and two women playing everyone else.

The “everyone else” can’t be too few people, the few the characters, the fewer the suspects. I already conflated a large number of characters, or had their actions take place off-stage. Even the victim is never seen, and why not, no one cares about the victim, only who the murderer is and how he or she did it.

Each woman plays two onstage roles … and that other man plays five. Five roles. Tricky.

Until last night, when it was illustrated that each makes only one entrance, and don’t contribute anything at all to the plot. So they are cut. Et voila!

So happy that my readers were interested by the plot, and the characters. Whew. There are a few characters who have not yet captured the readers’ interest, I can work with that. The entire read-through took one hour and ten minutes -- so I need to cut NO LESS THAN twenty minutes from its length.

And I can do that.

My apologies for being cryptic. All will be revealed.